Yesterday K had her last school field trip for the year. Her school went to the local zoo. I went as a chaperone and took 1/2 day off from work.
At the school, I pull in and was told by the Autism Guidance Counselor that do to the number of students going that all parents who were attending the trip had to drive their own kids. Okay no problem in driving my daughter to the zoo. I then go into her classroom and all the kids were watching the spaceship launch. K say me and got all excited, starting jumping around and said "Mommy" and gave me a hug! Then one of her classmates came over and gave me a hug. I told K to go sit back down with the other students and she sat back down, but not without crying. I filled out the student release form and her teacher Ms.Y told K that she could come back over to me, that K did not understand why I told her to go sit back down. So K back up and came over to me. That was the first of the melt downs (minor - but the first).
K and I leave her classroom and go the car. K sees the bus and wants to get on it - K LOVES riding the bus to school. She understood that she was riding with me, but she wanted to be on the bus. That started the next melt down. K started to whine and cry. I tried to tell her that the bus does not have her toys nor music. She came to car and I got her in. At that point, she decided she did not want to wear the "field day shirt" and proceed to take it off. K had a dress on, so taking off the shirt was no big deal. Then we had to wait for the students to load the bus. This took awhile and K hates waiting in the car with the car at a standstill. K could have gone into further melt down mood, but I saved the day by putting on David Bowie's "Golden Years". K calmed down and soon we got moving.
We got to the zoo after taking some weird longish way rather then going straight on the interstate, but that is what I get for following the bus driver. We get out of the car and the bus unloads. We all walk up to the zoo entrance, and I am surrounded by a sea of purple shirts - the color of the special "field day shirts". 60 or so students, teachers and paraprofessionals all in purple. I look around and there are mostly boys from Pre-K to 5th grade with only a few girls in the mix. I counted 5 girls (including K) there could have been as many as 10 girls. I found that in this crowd, that Autism is in not racist, it is not judgmental - it affects all families in all races in all income brackets. Autism may be slightly sexist by impacting more boys then girls, but it could also be that girls are harder to diagnosis then boys if the girls have HFA (High Functioning Autism). (This a post for another day to go into.)
K got in for free, I had to pay. After paying, we followed the mass amount of purple shirts into the zoo. I followed Ms. Y and her class to the train. This zoo has a train that circles the back with 2 stops - one stop near the main exit and the other stop at the back off the zoo. Come to find out there would not be another train for about 20 minutes. Then the conductor decided to get another train rather then making all the kids wait. I had asked K is she wanted to wait for the train or go see the animals. K choose waiting for the train. So we waited. While waiting, there was one child who I do not know if he was verbal or not, but he was sitting. He started fussing and making noise, I believe he did not like waiting. The train came and we boarded. Once we were sitting on the train and the train took off, there was a girl behind who was rocking back and forth during the whole ride. Her father kept telling her to "stop rocking". The boy next to us was rocking as well, but his father did not tell him to stop. Now does telling your child who is stimming to stop help? I really don't know. (K does not rock - she gets all bouncy, jumpy and hand flapping when she is happy or excited ... but I do not tell her to stop. She does when she is upset hit her head and I will tell her stop then. Or with loud noises until she gets use to the sound she will stick her fingers near her ears - this happens a lot since DH works with power tools.)
At the second stop, K was given the option to keep riding or go see the animals. K again chose to ride on the train. She said "I want train please". After that was over, K looked at me and said "Go see animals". So off we went to see the various animals. The animals that attracted the most attention from K was the giraffes, the red viper, the fish, and the dinosaur attraction.
At this zoo, there are giraffes that you pay $2 and you can feed them. K at first tried tearing off the little leaves from the 2 twigs she was given to feed the giraffe. Then she tried to give the giraffe the whole twig. Finally, she got the hang of breaking off the little twigs from the main twig and feeding it to the giraffe. K did a good job feeding the giraffe. Previously, when trying to feed animals, K would flip out and not want to do it.
Next the red viper snake held her attention. In the snake house there were all these snakes, lazing about as snakes do. Nothing really held her attention until we came across the red viper. This snake was moving all about and up the window. K was just amazed at this animal. We stood there for several mintues watching this snake. When it was time to move on K, did not want to go so we watched the snake some more.
We then went to the "Dino Alive" exhibit. I personally would not have gone to it myself, but K loved it. At first she was not sure how to make out the dinosaurs. They were not caged in like the other animals. It was set up on a path, almost like a safari excursion, expect there were no jeeps. The dinosaurs were "kept back" by these wood fences. Obviously the dinosaurs were mechanical. K was interested in all of it. There was this one dinosaur that we walked past, as we walked past it, it spit water at us. K got all wet. I moved her back into the path of the spitting dinosaur so she would get wet again. K said "Stop dinosaur stop!". Then there was this fort built with sticks that the kids could climb on. Since K is a master climber - she had a ball on this. Then once we left, there was the gift shop with the mechanical dinosaurs that the kid could control. K had fun with that.
Overall we had a good time! K came home with me for the day rather then going back to school and to extended day care.
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